Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we are doing. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder.
What is a wiki? The first time I (Sue) heard this expression was in relation to Wikipedia, and in that instance I was hearing a staff member rant about this terrible new thing on the web that we must punish our students for using. This was in the early days of Wikipedia and there may have been a good reason for academic suspicion then as Wikipedia was sorting itself out, but now, I would like to argue for its acceptance as a useful resource, although it needs to be treated with caution like any published material that claims to be a purveyor of the truth. Ward Cunningham created the first wiki in 1995 as a means to encourage people to publish easily, any time they wanted. (Richardson, 2010). It has developed into a huge resource in which any individual can contribute to human knowledge. But, is it safe to use as a reference? Richardson makes the point that students are using Wikipedia whether we like it or not, and rather than try to prevent its use, we need to help students assess the material. On the extremes of the argument for and against using Wikipedia as a reference, one group would say that entries are compromised often by people who purposefully add incorrect factual material or who delete text. The other side of the argument is that the Wikipedia managers are constantly checking entries for this sort of sabotage and their record currently is that corrections are being made within half a day. I would say that this fact alone makes it reasonably reliable but nonetheless each entry should be assessed by anyone who wishes to use it. We need to ask questions such as, 'who are the contributors - are they experts in this field?' and 'can this material be checked against other sources?' as well as 'does this make sense in relation to what I already know about the subject - does it feel right?'. The danger of relying on Wikipedia alone, applies to any other sources, printed or otherwise. One of the best ways to assess Wikipedia overall, is to go to a subject that you already know a fair bit about, and see whether you think it is accurate and fully representative. I have looked at half a dozen articles today in my specialist area of music, and their information is accurate, although not at all comprehensive. I would prefer it to be that way rather than comprehensive and inaccurate. The articles also had very useful references for the reader to find more information.
The 'wiki' part of Wikipedia is a huge resource open to all. Now wikis are used for all sorts of purposes in business, education and recreation. Because they allow multiple authors to contribute, wikis are an excellent resource to encourage group authorship and as a means for working through problems together. The advantage to a university such as ours is that the students comprising a group can live anywhere and still take part. Other advantages of wikis is that they enable all sorts of visual and audio documents to be inserted, making for a very creative resource, and as I argued in our introduction, creativity is an essential part of active learning. We have demonstrated, by the way we have both contributed to this wiki as our assignment for the course, that interaction, creative thinking, and fun exploration of the Web are all part of the wiki environment. Here is a lighthearted example of what can be done:
Student one creates a Toondoo. This is a cartoon creator, freely available as a source of amusement, but which can be used to make a serious point (as we have done several times in our assignment). Student one adds some text around this, explaining what she means by the inclusion of the cartoon, and invites others in her group to contribute.
http://www.toondoo.com/
Student two come into the wiki and makes a few edits to student one's text (adding and taking out apostrophes, correcting spelling and adding a few thoughts that had not occurred to student one). Student one does not take offence because the group had discussed the objectives, methods and modes of practice and was expecting this level of cooperation. In any case, if student two had exceeded the bounds in some way (such as accidentally deleting a nice youtube example as I have done), it is possible to view the history of edits and fix that up. It is also possible to email directly to members of the group from the wiki. Finally, the lecturer can come in and see what is going on, adding comments and suggestions, etc.
Example made in "Finale"
Student two thinks of a piece of music which illustrates the point that student one made with the cartoon. He knows how to write music so he goes to Musescore which is a free music writing software (one of many available on Web 2.0) and writes a tune. (It is possible to add the sound too of course, but he ran out of time to figure out how to do that - never mind, he can do that later). http://musescore.org/en/download
Student three signs in and makes an argument to do with animals dancing to music, and makes his own animation from his cat photos at Animate Photos. http://www.animatephotos.com (This is an imaginary assignment so please excuse the nonesense).
Student one returns and says: "hey my cat tried that dancing once, and look at what it did to her!"
Of course this very serious piece of group research would be accompanied by erudite readings downloaded from Google Scholar or databases available through the uni library and there would be a comprehensive bibliography on one page of the wiki. The lecturer might advise that this piece of research would benefit from being opened up for comment from students in the rest of the course, and then the students will get very interesting feedback (including one silly comment which they will ignore) along with new references and blogs on the subject to follow up on. Eventually, this piece might grow and develop to the stage where it should be 'published', ie., made available for anyone to read, and/or, write.
All of this can be done in a matter of weeks. Imagine how long and involved the process of getting that sort of information, fun and feedback would have taken in the good old days!
Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we are doing.
Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder.
What is a wiki? The first time I (Sue) heard this expression was in relation to Wikipedia, and in that instance I was hearing a staff member rant about this terrible new thing on the web that we must punish our students for using. This was in the early days of Wikipedia and there may have been a good reason for academic suspicion then as Wikipedia was sorting itself out, but now, I would like to argue for its acceptance as a useful resource, although it needs to be treated with caution like any published material that claims to be a purveyor of the truth. Ward Cunningham created the first wiki in 1995 as a means to encourage people to publish easily, any time they wanted. (Richardson, 2010). It has developed into a huge resource in which any individual can contribute to human knowledge. But, is it safe to use as a reference? Richardson makes the point that students are using Wikipedia whether we like it or not, and rather than try to prevent its use, we need to help students assess the material. On the extremes of the argument for and against using Wikipedia as a reference, one group would say that entries are compromised often by people who purposefully add incorrect factual material or who delete text. The other side of the argument is that the Wikipedia managers are constantly checking entries for this sort of sabotage and their record currently is that corrections are being made within half a day. I would say that this fact alone makes it reasonably reliable but nonetheless each entry should be assessed by anyone who wishes to use it. We need to ask questions such as, 'who are the contributors - are they experts in this field?' and 'can this material be checked against other sources?' as well as 'does this make sense in relation to what I already know about the subject - does it feel right?'. The danger of relying on Wikipedia alone, applies to any other sources, printed or otherwise. One of the best ways to assess Wikipedia overall, is to go to a subject that you already know a fair bit about, and see whether you think it is accurate and fully representative. I have looked at half a dozen articles today in my specialist area of music, and their information is accurate, although not at all comprehensive. I would prefer it to be that way rather than comprehensive and inaccurate. The articles also had very useful references for the reader to find more information.
The 'wiki' part of Wikipedia is a huge resource open to all. Now wikis are used for all sorts of purposes in business, education and recreation. Because they allow multiple authors to contribute, wikis are an excellent resource to encourage group authorship and as a means for working through problems together. The advantage to a university such as ours is that the students comprising a group can live anywhere and still take part. Other advantages of wikis is that they enable all sorts of visual and audio documents to be inserted, making for a very creative resource, and as I argued in our introduction, creativity is an essential part of active learning. We have demonstrated, by the way we have both contributed to this wiki as our assignment for the course, that interaction, creative thinking, and fun exploration of the Web are all part of the wiki environment. Here is a lighthearted example of what can be done:
Student one creates a Toondoo. This is a cartoon creator, freely available as a source of amusement, but which can be used to make a serious point (as we have done several times in our assignment). Student one adds some text around this, explaining what she means by the inclusion of the cartoon, and invites others in her group to contribute.
Student two come into the wiki and makes a few edits to student one's text (adding and taking out apostrophes, correcting spelling and adding a few thoughts that had not occurred to student one). Student one does not take offence because the group had discussed the objectives, methods and modes of practice and was expecting this level of cooperation. In any case, if student two had exceeded the bounds in some way (such as accidentally deleting a nice youtube example as I have done), it is possible to view the history of edits and fix that up. It is also possible to email directly to members of the group from the wiki. Finally, the lecturer can come in and see what is going on, adding comments and suggestions, etc.
Student two thinks of a piece of music which illustrates the point that student one made with the cartoon. He knows how to write music so he goes to Musescore which is a free music writing software (one of many available on Web 2.0) and writes a tune. (It is possible to add the sound too of course, but he ran out of time to figure out how to do that - never mind, he can do that later).
http://musescore.org/en/download
Student three signs in and makes an argument to do with animals dancing to music, and makes his own animation from his cat photos at Animate Photos.
http://www.animatephotos.com
(This is an imaginary assignment so please excuse the nonesense).
Student one returns and says:
"hey my cat tried that dancing once, and look at what it did to her!"
Of course this very serious piece of group research would be accompanied by erudite readings downloaded from Google Scholar or databases available through the uni library and there would be a comprehensive bibliography on one page of the wiki. The lecturer might advise that this piece of research would benefit from being opened up for comment from students in the rest of the course, and then the students will get very interesting feedback (including one silly comment which they will ignore) along with new references and blogs on the subject to follow up on. Eventually, this piece might grow and develop to the stage where it should be 'published', ie., made available for anyone to read, and/or, write.
All of this can be done in a matter of weeks. Imagine how long and involved the process of getting that sort of information, fun and feedback would have taken in the good old days!